Page 7 of The Executioners Three
“Mine too.” Freddie’s nostrils flared, and she pushed the bike faster. “Parents don’t know anything.”
“Old people don’t know anything.” Divya stomped her feet. “I mean, I didn’t even see the body!”
“And I only saw his shoes!”
“So we definitely aren’t traumatized.” Divya flipped her braid over her shoulder.
“Definitely not.” Freddie mimicked the movement with her rapidly expanding curls. “It takes more than a little murder to scare the likes of us.”
“Exactly. No, wait.” Divya skidded to a halt. “Murder?What are you talking about? It was a suicide.”
Freddie squeezed her bike brakes. “That was not a suicide, Div.”
“Uh, Sheriff Bowman herself said it was a suicide.”
“The body was hanging twenty feet off the ground.” Freddie rolled the bike backward, then ducked under Divya’s umbrella. At least far enough to protect her hair.
“So? Maybe the man wanted a climb before he died.”
“A climb on what ladder? And on what branches? There wasn’t a single thing he could’ve used to get up there.”
“So what are you trying to say?” Divya launched back into a march. Rain sprayed Freddie once more. “Are you saying you know better than Sheriff Bowman?”
“Maybe?” Freddie pushed her bike after Divya. “You didn’t hear the screams on Wednesday night.”
“You mean the screams of drunk prep schoolers?”
“But what if that wasn’t what I heard, Div? What if Ididhear screams for help?”
“Sheriff Bowman was in those woods arresting people. Surely if there’d been a murder underway, she would’ve heard those screams too.”
“Okay, but how do you account for the dead guy’s clothes? He was wearing jogging shoes. Who dresses up like that to go kill themselves?”
“I don’t know.” Divya shook the umbrella. Rain splattered. “But I do know you’re not a detective. Just because you solved one shoplifting case when you were riding with Bowman does not qualify you as a pie.”
“A pie?” Freddie cocked her head. “You mean a… PI?”
“It can be pronounced both ways.”
“It definitely cannot.”
“That’s not the point!” Divya shook the umbrella again, and this time,rain splattered Freddie’s face. “The point is that you aren’t aPee Eye,and while I get that your gut is doing its spidey-sense tingling, maybe you should leave it to the actual professionals.”
Freddie’s fingers instinctively tightened on the brakes. The bike gave a skittering skip. She knew Divya was thinking about Sheriff Bowman right now, since Bowman was the current “professional” in charge of such things.
But Freddie couldn’t help but think of her dad instead. He had been local sheriff before Bowman—meaning hewouldhave been the “professional” that Freddie would leave this murder to… if he hadn’t died when Freddie was five.
Sometimes she wondered if it was mere coincidence she wanted to follow him on the same career path. Her mom had divorced Frank when Freddie had been only two, so she’d barely known the man, and she’d learned young to never ask about him.
The consequences just weren’t worth the curiosity. Mom always clammed up and got stony—sometimes for days at a time—while Freddie’s stepdad, Steve, just looked heartbreakingly sad.
Freddie hated it. And she hated how even thinking of Dad made her own insides get stony. Made her feel guilty, like she’d broken some rule that no one had ever actually told her was in effect.
She squeezed again at the brakes. They squeaked a sympathetic reply.
“I know I’m not a professional,” Freddie finally admitted, pushing past the sudden rocks in her abdomen. “Not yet anyway. But you know I’m the Answer Finder, Divya. Everyone at school asks me to find them sources in the archives. Like all the time.”
This earned one of Divya’syou sweet, innocent childfaces. “Oh my Honey Bunches of Oats. You’re just being used.”
